Here Come the Cougars: Although SIU Edwardsville is in its final year of transition to Division I, the Cougars will play a full Ohio Valley Conference slate. SIUE will be eligible to win the OVC regular season title, but cannot enter the conference tournament until they have completed their transition in 2012-13. The Cougars are unlikely, however, to make a major impact this season after going 0-9 against OVC teams a year ago.

Out of Balance: As a result of the Cougars entrance to the conference, the now 11-team league will play an uneven schedule of 16 games, much shorter than the 20 and 22-game schedules seen since the last OVC expansion. But the current structure won’t stay in place for long. After it was announced that Belmont will join the conference next season, OVC commissioner Beth DeBauchetold the voice of the Racers, Neal Bradley, that “it appears that it would make sense to have divisions, most notably for our men’s and women’s basketball teams.” But the OVC might not remain a 12-team league long enough to matter. Jacksonville State is exploring a move to a FBS conference according to a release from the school, and the Huntsville Times reports that Tennessee State has been invited to join the SWAC.

What Was Old is New Again: Two teams on opposite ends of last year’s final standings have one thing in common: inexperience. Both Morehead State and Jacksonville State will feature teams with more new faces than old this year. Last season’s last place Gamecocks have seven transfers and four new players, with Stephen Hall being the only Gamecock with more than one year of experience. Meanwhile, MSU has eight new faces, including six freshmen joining the defending OVC Tournament champions.

New Sideline Patrolmen: Two of the top teams last year, Murray State and Tennessee Tech, will feature new coaches this season. Steve Payne replaces Mike Sutton, who retired after eight seasons with the Golden Eagles. Steve Prohm will take over the Racers after Billy Kennedy left to take the head coaching job at Texas A&M.

Mike Krzyzewski said on his XM radio show on Wednesday that he expects Kyrie Irving will be out of action for “a long time.” He didn’t specifically elaborate on what that might mean, but given the relative gloom and doom coming out of Durham over the last week, we’re leaning toward not seeing him in a Duke uniform again this season. Coach K has been called many things in his career over the years, but one of the things we’ve not heard about him is that he’s an embellisher or BSer — he pretty much tells you what he thinks to be true. With that in mind, we believe him when he says Irving may not play again this season.

Well, it’s not the Nobel Peace Prize, but maybe that’s next… Bill Self, John Calipari, Ron Hunter, Mike Sutton and Scott Nagyhave been nominated for the first United Nations Nongovernment Organization Positive Peace Awards in the coach category. Yes, there actually is a coach category. Self and Sutton were nominated for work with other charities, but the other three were honored as a result of the work they’ve done with Samaritan’s Feet, a charity that provides footwear to needy children around the world. The article actually says that two of those places were “Haiti and Detroit,” which is rather depressing that an American city has such inherent structural and poverty problems that it appears in the same sentence as a third-world country.

Luke Winn is back with his weekly power rankings, a compendium of information where if you don’t walk away after reading it having learned sixteen new things, then you’re smarter than the average bear. This week is particularly insightful because he talked with numerous assistant coaches to get the insider scoop on all of his ranked teams and their best players.

Kansas’ Mario Littlehas been suspended indefinitely by Kansas for a late-night altercation on Wednesday involving his girlfriend that resulted in his arrest for battery, criminal damage and criminal trespassing. Without reading too much between the lines, it appears that Little got upset when he found another man at his girlfriend’s residence, and things escalated to a bad place from that point. Regardless of the reason, it’s clear that Bill Self and KU are taking this seriously, especially in the light of the past year-plus of poor decisions by KU athletes. The 6’6 Little was averaging 6/4 in around sixteen minutes per game, but certainly Kansas has plenty of depth at the guard position especially with Josh Selby debuting on Saturday against USC.

In this article at the Omaha World-Herald, Lee Barfknecht writes that former UTEP, Texas A&M and Kentucky coach Billy Gillispiecould be a candidate for the Texas Tech job if things don’t turn around for Pat Knight there soon. From the entire blogosphere to TTU brass, we believe that such a move would be a great hire — Billy Clyde needs to be back in college basketball somewhere (big grin).

WYN2K. The OVC is a league that has been incredibly up-and-down depending on a given year. In the last five years its RPI has hovered between the 19th and 25th best conference, and its Sagarin rating between 16th and 26th. As a testament to its herky-jerkiness, no league champion has received the same seed as the prior year’s champion for the last eight years (13/15/14/13/12/15/14/16). But if there is one trend worth noting, it is that the league’s overall profile appears to be dropping. After a seven-year period from 1998-2004 where the league champion averaged a #12.7 seed, the last three seasons have resulted in an average of #15.0. This is supported by the reality on the court, as no OVC team has won an NCAA Tourney game since the 80s, when Austin Peay (1987), Murray St. (1988), and Middle Tennessee St. (1989) comprised a three-year string of first round upsets.

Predicted Champion.Austin Peay (#15 Seed NCAA). This was the easiest pick of the previews yet. “Let’s Go Peay” returns all five starters (including OVC POY Drake Reed) from a team that was the regular-season champion in 2007, but who lost on a buzzer beater to Eastern Kentucky in improbable fashion. 6’5 forward and resident muscle man Fernandez Lockett is likely another first-team all-OVC selection.

Others Considered. Eastern Kentucky was the second-best team in the OVC last season, and Jeff Neubauer’s methodical style (310th in tempo nationally) led to EKU rankings near the top of the nation in effective FG% (18th) and two-point FG% (8th). In other words, the Colonels consistently take and make good shots. If any team is ready to supplant Austin Peay again, it’s likely to be EKU. Murray St. is always in the mix in this conference (20 straight winning seasons), and we expect this year to be no different. The Racers finished strong in 2007 winning eight of their last ten, and return many of their key players from last season. Another team that finished very strong last year was Tennessee Tech, who won twelve of their last fifteen games as their coach Mike Sutton continued to arduously work his way back from Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Games to Watch. If they OVC Championship game is anything like last year’s, then it should most definitely be on your March viewing calendar.

OVC Championship Game (03.08.08). ESPN.

RPI Booster Games. Last year the only BCS opponent that the OVC managed to defeat was Northwestern (by Tennessee Tech) at a neutral site. Otherwise, the league was 0-20 against BCS teams. We’ve identified several opportunities for an OVC squad to pull an upset this year to help the league’s overall RPI.

Tennessee Tech @ Rutgers (11.09.07)

Austin Peay @ Vanderbilt (11.10.07)

Georgia Tech @ Tennessee St. (11.11.07)

Murray St. @ Mississippi St. (12.01.07)

Samford @ Florida St. (12.02.07)

Tennessee Tech @ Oregon St. (12.16.07)

Odds of Multiple NCAA Bids. Absolutely no chance.

Neat-o Stat. Reigning OVC Player of the Year Drake Reed was the first sophomore to win the honor since Popeye Jones did so back in 1990 at Murray St. It’s unclear whether Reed is related to Jones (see below).

64/65-Team Era. The OVC has gone 3-24 (.111) over the era. As mentioned above, the glory days were the late 80s, when the OVC won a first round NCAA game each year from 1987-89. The league hasn’t won a game since, although it has had a couple of very close calls (#2 Duke 81, #15 Murray St. 78 – 1997; #1 Michigan St. 75, #16 Murray St. 71 (OT) – 1990).

Final Thought. The OVC is definitely a top-heavy league this year. There are three or four teams that can realistically win the NCAA bid, while the others are fairly noncompetitive. Even with the lack of a balanced league, there is likely only one team with the experience and talent for us to consider it as possible first round upset material – Austin Peay. But as we saw last year, even with the best team in the OVC, there’s no certainty that the Governors can win the conference tournament in its own back yard (47 miles from Clarksville, TN, to this year’s site again, Nashville, TN).